One of the cultural gripes I see again and again has to do with the death of the mid-budget movie. If you’re a millennial or older, you know what I’m talking about. These are the movies that slot in between blockbusters and indies, the films you maybe didn’t see in theaters but definitely bought the DVD of and rewatched over and over. They may not offer radical artistic reinvention or awe-inspiring stories, but they often offer guaranteed laughs, a story that never gets old, and ideally some deeper truth that ends up being more potent because it goes down easy.
What does this have to do with The Prom, a stage musical currently playing at Lyric Arts? While mid-budget movies may be scarce, I believe this theatrical production can fill that void for you. It certainly filled the void for me when I went to see it with my brothers on a recent Saturday night.
We cackled. We let loose a couple cheek-streaking tears (I did, at least). We ate popcorn and sour Skittles and drank Nordeast tall boys from the well-stocked concession stand. Who needs The Odyssey when Minnesotans have this mid-budget magic waiting for them on Anoka’s main drag?
The Prom tells the story of four narcissistic Broadway actors, two of them fresh off a flop, who are in desperate need of some good PR. To rehab their image, they decide to take up a charitable cause, one small enough that they might be able to solve. Enter: Emma, a Midwestern high schooler whose dream of bringing her girlfriend to the prom led to the PTA canceling the dance rather than allowing a lesbian couple to attend.
“We’re gonna help that little lesbian,” sings one of the actors, “whether she likes it or not.”
Speaking of movies, you may be tempted to stay home and stream the movie version of The Prom on Netflix. That would be a grave mistake. Apologies to Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman, but if a musical calls for clueless Broadway egomaniacs, I want current theater people to play them, not A-list movie stars. It just works better that way.
At least, that’s my working theory after seeing this production that’s been finely tuned by director Amanda White. “Finely tuned” doesn’t sound all that exciting, I admit, but The Prom is a full-blown musical comedy, and the best of this genre rely on razor-sharp timing, props and costumes that amp up the hilarity on the page, and songs that make you think to yourself, “This is hilarious, but also, somehow, a total bop?!” And at Lyric Arts, those boxes are checked, checked and…checked.
The hilarity is also found in the specificity. These aren’t just any four thespians who descend on Edgewater, Indiana in their misguided attempt to help Emma (played by Imani Harris, whose crystal-clear singing played perfectly against her flamboyant interlopers). We have two-time Tony winner Dee Dee Allen (Emily Grodzik), one-time Drama Desk winner Barry Glickman (the charming Andrew Newman), chorus girl Angie Dickinson (Dorian Brooke) who never got her big break and pretentious Julliard grad Trent Oliver (Erik Haering), as well as their fried publicist Sheldon (Parker David Payne, who wrings every single laugh out of his handful of lines).
When they arrive in town, our unlikely group of heroes must contend with more than a bigoted PTA — they’ll also have to face the raucous crowd at a monster truck rally, a divorced talk-show host, and a horde of Christ-loving teens. This is not your typical high school musical, I promise you.
I’ll get to the leading performers in a second. First, I want to give belated praise to Lexi Johnson, who I first saw in Ride the Cyclone at Lyric Arts earlier this year (a show I didn’t write a review for). Even though Johnson only plays the side role of Kaylee, a high school mean girl, in The Prom, I left the theater with the same thought as the first time I saw her: she needs to star in her own musical as soon as possible. She’s a tractor beam on stage that draws all eyes to her; here, she was like one of the Plastics from Mean Girls plunked down in a new school. (But if directors are reading this, please cast her as the lead in a better musical than Mean Girls.)
Now that that’s rectified, let’s talk about the “musical” part of this musical comedy. Composer Matthew Sklar and lyricist Chad Beguelin shuffle deftly through joke-a-stanza comedy numbers, like when the thespians barge into a PTA meeting (“Go on then, threaten to riot, it won’t phase me in the least. I understand furious townsfolk, I did Beauty and The Beast,” sings Dee Dee); followed by genuinely heartfelt songs, like “Dance With You,” in which openly gay Emma and her closeted girlfriend Alyssa Greene (Sydney Lin) sing about how simple their dream really is: all they want to do is dance together at their prom.
You’re never far from a laugh-out-loud moment in this show, but unlike other musical comedies that overindulge on one-liners, you’re never far from the beating heart of this musical, either. In a time when support for LGBTQ+ communities seems to be backsliding, it’s a heart that seems to be beating louder than any other production of The Prom I’ve seen.
Playing a high school romance on stage always has the potential to dip into cliché, but Harris and Lin’s scenes together are equally vulnerable and enthusiastic, which helps us invest in them instead of being steamrolled by the New York troupe.
That said, I think many audience members will come away cheering on Dee Dee, as Grodzik lives up to her line “How do you silence a woman who’s known for her belt?”; or Angie, as Brooke takes the weakest of the four characters and makes her chorus girl sparkle, even getting the biggest laugh of the night before her Act 2 Chicago parody “Zazz”; or Trent, as Haering whips the ensemble (and us in the audience) into a frenzy during his unexpected showstoppers. Look for the final, subtle move he makes at the end of “Love Thy Neighbor” in Act 2. I don’t know if he made that choice himself or White gave him that note, but it’s brilliant.
Can The Prom actually teach bigots to, as Trent sings, “love thy neighbor”? I don’t think any story with an ending as easy as this, especially as it pertains to Alyssa’s mom (the forceful Sheena Janson), can be expected to do that kind of work. But if we’re talking about people who still have the ability to laugh at themselves, I think The Prom at Lyric Arts has a shot of getting them to join the dance.
Full Transparency: I bought my own ticket for The Prom.
The Prom
Lyric Arts
420 E. Main Street
Anoka, MN 55303
July 10 – August 9
Read more and buy tickets here
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